Selling physical products online (part 2 of 2)
June 25, 2009
Two days ago I posted the first part of this two-part series on how to sell physical products online. The first post dealt with finding an in-demand product, pricing it correctly and getting traffic using second-tier pay-per-click sites.
This second post deals with getting traffic from search engines (primarily Google) instead of pay-per-click sites. As I mentioned in the first part, Ted now gets almost all of his traffic from Google instead of pay-per-click (PPC) sites. That's because it's far cheaper to generate traffic from search engines than it is to pay for traffic using PPC. Getting started using PPC is great if you have the budget for it and your conversion rate is good enough to turn a profit, but the more traffic you can get from search engines the higher your profit margins will be.
Here's what I did to start generating razor-targeted traffic from the search engines for Ted's porch swing business:
Do The Keyword Research
Before doing anything else, you should always research your target keywords. You need to find out what the best terms would be to rank for. To accomplish this I use Google's AdWords Keyword Tool to find out what people are looking for and how much traffic I can generate.
I also check out the competition to see how hard I'm going to have to work to get the site ranked for the keywords I think will be best. This basically involves seeing how well linked the competition is, which tells me about how many links I'm going to need to rank well.
Setup A Feeder Blog
Rather than try to rank Ted's porch swings site directly, I chose to setup a Wordpress blog on a new domain, rank that site and use it to pass traffic over to Ted's site. There are a few reasons for this:
- Ted's not a search engine guy, so his site wasn't really built for getting ranked well in the search engines.
As I said in the first part of this series, Ted was doing great without getting any traffic from the search engines. He's not a search engine guy, and he was doing fine without the search engines, so his site isn't well optimized for search engines. It is, however, very well optimized to get people to buy!
- Having a site that recommends another site is a great way to increase conversion rates.
Good affiliate marketers have been using recommendations to increase conversion rates for years. If you write an article that praises a site and product you don't personally own, that recommendation provides a level of legitimacy that product owners can't generate themselves. It's like a testimonial, and increases conversion rates significantly.
I chose Wordpress for my feeder site because blogs are fantastically easy to rank due to the fact that each time a post is made it "pings" a variety of sites that automatically index your blog's content. That means you immediately get a bunch of free links back to your blog, which gets each new page indexed fast and improves your overall link popularity (and thus your ability to rank well in the search engines).
Use The Right Wordpress Plugins
I like to use the All-In-One SEO Pack for Wordpress, because it lets me give the blog a more search-engine-friendly title and meta description, as well as allows me to disable the indexing of categories and archives. I don't like the categories or archives getting indexed because I don't want Google to rank anything but the permalinked blog post pages. I don't want folks landing on the category pages and having to click again to get to the full article — I want them sent straight to the articles.
I also use the WP-Sticky plugin for Wordpress, which allows you to select a post that will always be on the home page of the blog. That way I can optimize the home page content for my chosen keywords.
Fill The Blog With On-Theme Content
Once the blog was up I seeded it with a bunch of EzineArticles.com articles related to porch swings. That way the site is chock-full of content that is very specifically related to my target keywords. I wrote a post targeting my chosen keywords and then made it the "sticky" post that is always shown on the home page. That post strongly recommends my brother's porch swings and links to the site in the end.
In addition to the recommendation and the link, I also put up an attention-grabbing banner ad for my brother's site. As of today this combination is generating a better than 50% click-through rate. So one out of two people who visit the feeder site are continuing on to Ted's site. That's like getting a 50% click-through rate for AdSense ads. How cool is that?
The result is a lot more sales for Ted. Ted's conversion rate is about 5% (yes, 5% on physical products ranging in price from $60 - $260 dollars), so his site is obviously setup to get visitors to buy. Combine that great site setup with the razor-targeted traffic from the search engines and you get a super-successful real-world business selling physical products.
Get Links to the Blog
The final step was to start getting links to the blog. I always get links from a variety of sources (3 sources in particular). All the link sources are absolutely necessary to the successful ranking of the blog. I can't emphasize that enough. The search engines want to see a variety of links from a variety of sources.
The result is that the blog ranks #2 for its primary keywords in Google, #5 in Yahoo and #2 in Bing (formerly MSN Live).
Since achieving those rankings I've also begun to work on ranking the site for an even tougher set of keywords that gets about fourteen times as much traffic (according to Google's keyword tool). As of today, the site ranks #10 in Google and Bing for those keywords (I've got a bit more work to do before it makes it into Yahoo for those terms). I expect it to be in the top 5 in a few weeks.
Exact Instructions Coming Monday
What I've given you here is an overview of how I set things up. But there are some very detailed things I do to assess keyword competition (and the value of a set of keywords for conversion purposes), as well as the linking methods that I use which are not stated here.
However, this Monday (June 29th) you'll have an opportunity to get all of the details of how I go about researching keywords and ranking sites in the search engines (including my sources for getting the all-important links), as well as the exact methods my brother uses to find in-demand products, price them right and get cheap traffic from second-tier pay-per-click engines to start generating profits immediately. Look for an email from me about that on Monday.
Until then, please post your thoughts and questions in a comment below.
Comments
88 Responses to “Selling physical products online (part 2 of 2)”
Got something to say?
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Jonathan Leger has been earning his living online full-time since the fall of 2004. He regularly posts advice about search engine optimization (his current passion), AdSense and Internet Marketing. 
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Hi Jon,
I am pleased to learn that I am doing the same things you advocate in your post.
Wordpress blogs with a static frontpage makes life so much easier.
I use a combination of 3WayLinks and links from high PR sites - as per Angela V Edwards.
Interested to know your views on Angelas method of getting a 0 page rank link from an inner page of a high PR site.
Cheers,
Peter
Jon,
Nothing beats Wordpress!
Instead of Wordpress Sticky, another easier to use option is "What Would Seth Godin Do".
Try it out I think you'll like it.
Hi,
I agree with you Jon. Start with keyword research, everything else then follows. It's amazing how many people still miss this vital step.
More power to you.
All the best, Allen
Hi Jon,
As usual, quality post that share about your experience is your testing that shown results. Look forward for your next post on the exact method that you use.
John Tan
Your blog is ranking number 10 in Google for the primary keyword, not number 2. It also hasn't been updated in a year.
I'm calling BS.
(added by Jonathan Leger: this comment is not true — see my response in a comment below)
Hi Jon,
I've just started with Wordpress.
I did the keyword thing, but the linking should be interesting.
Thanks.
OK John,
I better see things like your 1waylinks, mywaylinks, and 3waylinks as your way of getting back links to your blogs and websites on Monday since I have been using them all for sometime now.
I look forward to Monday!
~SG
Kevin:
"Your blog is ranking number 10 in Google for the primary keyword, not number 2. It also hasn't been updated in a year. I'm calling BS."
When you open your mouth before you know the facts, you tend to make yourself look like a fool.
Be smart: look at the domain name and figure out what my primary keywords are, then search Google for those.
And next time try getting the facts before you start maliciously accusing people of dishonesty.
Feeder blogs are a great way to get keyword anchored links, especially when you want to target just one single product and not an entire site.
Hi Jon
excellent plan and good tips. It shows once more that you have to have a clear plan AND also have to follow through on it.
I like the part of creating a feeder site with a blog and creating an article that is not full of hype or a sales pitch but soft sells the product. My own experience shows as well that this is crucial for a high click through rate.
While most people probably could write such an article (or find someone who does it), the most difficult part still is to get the right backlinks. Looking forward to your tips on that!
Gunter
Hi Kevin,
John said
"The result is that the blog ranks #2 for its primary keywords in Google, #5 in Yahoo and #2 in Bing (formerly MSN Live)."
"primary keywords"
The site is ranked #2 in Google for "{snip: thanks Chuck, but I didn't mention the keywords on purpose}" (the primary keyword - check the title tag) and ranked #10 for "{snip: same}".
Regards,
Chuck
Can't wait for monday to reach to see what is the exact method you are referring to !
And all the best to your brother business too!
Regards,
Winson Yeung
Good info Jon. I recently discovered how powerful a blog pointing to another site can be.
You just have to be so careful with Google. I'm ranked #2 on MSN and Yahoo for my main keyword, but I'm nowhere to be found on Google. I used to be, but I did something stupid by creating another site almost identical to my main one. Well Google evidently slapped me the duplicate content penalty. It's the only thing I can figure happened since my main site has plenty of quality backlinks.
I'm doing some PPC and having success, but man it's a pain having to constantly monitor and adjust everything.
Looking forward to your other posts.
Scott
Jonathan,
Hopefully your Monday 29th post "crescendo" will include which WP theme you'd suggest using to store all those feeder eZine articles?
Personally, I like your Revolution theme (its clean and professional) and while I am doing OK using the Amazing Grace theme, I don't think it best suited for this model as well as other themes out there.
now i understand how to use the wp-sticky plugin.
and mix it with blog that extract rss feed. cheers jon..
p/s: hello from IM from malaysia..
Does your brother use an opt in list at all to email out specials or sales at all. I would think that you could also use twitter to announce special pricing or promotions. Just a thought!
realtor:
He doesn't collect emails on the site, but he did collect emails from folks via ebay to promote his products, yes.
Hi Jon, I can't wait for Monday! This is an interesting post. You've just confirmed that I should go wordpress for my next project. Thanks Jon.
A top seo guru who hides underground ( per se ) suggested secretly to me that for really tough seo keywords - such as those with traffic of 50-100,000 per month, that one should have 10 feeder sites/pages sitting on web2.0 properties that don't use the nofollow tag.
I have since heard this "secret" from one or two others who claim that article marketing is now slightly passed its prime and that these new methods of ranking your target site are not only all the rage, but effectively put it out of reach of many of us that were slightly challenged to start of with.
I see that you have employed a feeder site here, would several feeder pages from PR7 or PR8 sites not help to push this further Jon?
And now that you have it going so well, would not those PR0 pages sitting on PR7 sites not use your link love more effectively than linking to a brand new PR0 website?
Just musing out loud…
Great post as usual Jonathan!
Just had one question though:
Is there any benefit to using the WP-Sticky plugin with a post instead of using the built in functionality of WordPress to place a page as the default home page?
Thanks in advance,
Brett
Jon,
Great article as usual! Can you or someone else answer these 2 questions for me:
1. How did you make it so that when someone clicks on the inner page articles, the navigation bar disappears?
2. Is it possible to get your inner pages ranked on a website if you simply use other peoples ezinearticles?
Thanks!
wow jon i really want to know about your instruction please send me notification for that.
Little detail: You don't need WP-Sticky anymore. That functionality is built right into Wordpress with versions 2.7 and above.
Just expand "Visibility" within the Publish widget, then check "Stick this post to the front page."
Question: Is the only content you wrote for this new blog that stickied post? The rest is all taken from EzineArticles?
And that hasn't affected your ability to rank at all? I understand the duplicate content thing is a bit of a myth and all, but the way you populated the content for that site entirely with EZA outside of the front page and still ranked almost makes it look to easy.
I guess I'll have to experiment with it.
Again Jonathon great series of articles. I like that your brother chose a unique niche that you could talk about. I am sure he is not really worried that someone else is going to go after this niche from your directions. I really like to be able to look at the example of the article, your brothers site in this example. Often all I get is an explanation of the website.
Rick
SunGlynis:
Thanks for the note about the inclusion of the "sticky" functionality in WP 2.7+ — this site is using an older version, so didn't have that (my fault for not using an update install!)
Also, to answer your question: Yes, the blog consists of one unique post. The rest were taken from EzineArticles. However, I'm not trying to rank the inner pages, just the home page (the unique post).
However, it's my belief the the engines favor sites that have a lot of content focused on the same topic, even if you're only trying to rank one page of that content.
Hello Jon:
Great post. I can't hardly wait for the next and know the subjects
lacking yet on this one.
Tanks.
Jesus
Well, that gives me a new idea.
I buy my domains in bulk and I can only work so many sites at a time (even with outsourcing).
In the past I would install and configure Wordpress then add one unique post of content and point one EZA at it.
Then I would let it age while I worked on other sites. I'd only grow the new site and start promoting it fully when its turn came.
I think now I'll experiment with writing the one unique post to sticky to the front, then add a bunch of closely related content from EzineArticles while I drip feed the front page with a single 1WL post.
That way the site might have more authority and better rankings even before I get to "working" it.
Heh. Eager to try this out…
As always, thanks a ton Jon!
Excellent article dude! My only concern is using EZineArticles. Even though you are creating one unique page, wouldn't the site as a whole get Google slapped?
I thought I would never say this but I can't wait until Monday.
I can't wait to get it
Thanks for the heads up on the sticky plugin . . . great resource. Very useful tips, especially the one about getting links from 3 different resources.
I'll look forward to your post on Monday.
All the best,
Theresa
Very interesting! Also rather time-consuming, I suppose…
As always: we learn a lot of it!
Thank you!
Leo
Jon, I'm not sure about the value of the WP-Sticky plugin. Can't you just use the Wordpress settings to select a post that will appear on your home page? Why the plugin? Have I missed something?
Question if I may. A little off the wall but really need to know.
Jon, I saw you checking Google for competitors link values in a video some time back I believe. I.E. putting "link:" in front of the url.
Now i am using that, BUT- I then use a free web based link checker as well. Using "link:" might return 8 links the 2 link checkers give me back links in the 1,000's some times.
Question- What gives?
Who's right, who do you believe and why?
This has been buggin me and I even paid at get answers to find out and the guy didn't have a clue!
Thank you, OP
i'll wait until sunday, can't wait for the detail
Maybe I'm missing something, but I can't find the blog in Google at all. Google is so unpredictable these days.
Great post Jon!
Have you seen what Market Samurai is doing right now? It's an all in one SEO tool.
Looking forward to Monday's post!
Peter:
Perhaps you're searching for the wrong keywords? I did not state the keywords I'm ranking for in the post (on purpose). Or it's possible you're getting non-US results (if you're not based in the USA)?
Hi Jonathan
Some good info, looking forward to using it shortly…
Just a quick question - does it make any difference if the feeder blog and ecommerce site are hosted on the same server (reseller hosting at HostGator for example)?
Thanks :O)
Phil:
It doesn't make a difference in this case since I'm not trying to optimize the primary site, just the feeder.
As in Part 1 of this set, am very impressed by the amount off instructive content you provide in such a compressed format.
I've searched for the domain name in Google and the domain name didn't come up. But I'm still learning. I've took a screenshot and uploaded to my host.
Finally someone on a physical product too!
That's good to see, and it's also good to see that you're going into detail on monday. A lot of things I find around have like *the great solution of traffic* and then it's only one part…like 'make a video that goes like _this_' but then it doesn't say how to get people to watch the video…and then the rest they get really vague…
I am especially interested in your 3 Sources that searches like to see the links from. (You are revealing these sources right?) I have done article marketing extensively which has gotten a site from page 10 of google up to page 2 and then onto 1 but now its back on 2 again. Maybe multiple sources of links will put it back on 1 and keep it there.
Looking foreward to the monday posting, because when it is something concrete that I can use and looks worthy I actually do it nomatter how long it takes or how much work.
Peter:
That's not the site I'm talking about. That's a different site I never did anything with.
Hi Jon, I have reasons to believe what you say because I have been following you posts and they have guided me in SEO. The IAW is fantastic for instance.
I can hardly wait for the next post.
Bravo.
Thanks Jonathan
Out of interest what is your view on the backlinks packages that have been cropping up on the WF recently - someone mentioned Angelas monthly 'packets' previously
Are you aware of these and do you think that they provide a genuine method to attain good rankings?
Cheers again
Phil
Jon:
All of this is soooo new to me, but I need help. I'm not even familiar with the lingo, but I'm willing to learn. Will you be teaching a step-by-step process for someone like me? Please???
Thanks for the overview. I'm wondering if you edited the Ezine articles or simply copied and pasted. Are there any search engine penalizations for unoriginal content?
Brent:
Absolutely no editing of the EZA articles (that's not allowed by their terms of service). No penalties for duplicate content — that's a myth.
As usual Jon great advice.
I'm a member of both MWL's and 3WL's and tend to follow just about all you recommend.
Personally I prefer to use slightly rewritten PLR articles if I have suitable ones on topic (I have thousands of them so can normally find something) as at least I stand a chance of them being a bit more unique, and there are no links of anywhere else… It amazes me how many people buy PLR and never use them!
One of the previous feeder sites I set up using this same format hit the first page of Google within two weeks, now generates a load of traffic to the main site (as intended), and is responsible in the past three months for around 3,000 Euros worth of extra bookings for holiday apartments that we manage.
It works
Phil
I love this stuff, good job, I have been using 1 way links for a while now and have had great results. I do not have a feeder blog, but with 1 way links am I in a sense getting 100's of feeder blogs?
Thanks for all the good advice. I look forward to your emails.
… No penalties for duplicate content — that's a myth …
Wow! Thanks for the advice. Every site I read says you will get slapped, or worst, banned entirely.
Jon, is there any negatives to having 1 or more EZine articles on your site?
Great information as always. Looking forward to part 3.
Very Great Jonathan, i read detail in your post and i like the way you explain to us, i wait for 3 resouces to get links.
Nice information and thank you Jonathan for 2 part of series.
Keep it up and I am waiting for you next post.
Alex
Hey Jon,
Thanks for sharing. I'm pretty sure I know where you get your links from, since I've been following you pretty closely and also am a customer of all your link building services…hehe
Cheers!
Hi Jon,
yes its true that blogs are a easy way to get a quite search engine traffic. but also we should remeber that content of the blog also plays a vital role in getting the traffic. well thanks for your post..its a good one.
I've just create a blog last week on a high competition keyword, approximately 15 millions. To be shocked, I spend 4 days doing the backlink structure, and yesterday, my blog was ranked no. 7 on first page. That's quite impressive.
I think, we should focus on link building, optimize slowly for seo.
I use wordpress exclusively, it's such a fantastic tool, the quickest I got a post indexed was 6 minutes which is absolutely amazing to me.
I make a post, it gets indexed in the blink of an eye and 90% of the the posts I make are ranked within the first 10 results in Google and it's all free traffic…sweet!
I use the All In One SEO Plugin, particularly the auto tagging feature which, as the name suggests tags my posts automatically without me having to lift a finger.
I also use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool for my keyword research.
It's fantastic what you've been able to do for your brother, he must be really thankful to have such a switched on internet marketing genius for a brother.
The hardest thing for me is getting great quality one way links to my site. It's the one thing that I really struggle with and yet I know how important it is.
I look forward to your next instalment.
And tax ID? Is it required by law to be licensed if you have a business online selling a physical product?
great information , i read both part 1 and part 2 now waiting for 3rd one. adwords ppc is best
Great Jon!
Can't wait to see how will you able to rank well in all search engine. Same here creating a wordpress blog to drive traffic to my site. But unable to rank well enough for my blog.
Appreciate you can further explain how to rank well in all search engine.
Thanks!
Hello Jon,
You said:
"Jonathan Leger on June 25th, 2009 6:08 pm Brent:
Absolutely no editing of the EZA articles (that's not allowed by their terms of service). No penalties for duplicate content — that's a myth."
I'm not debating whether dupe content is a myth or not.
However, if you do think it's a myth then why do you have spinning built in into 1waylinks?
I'm a long time subcriber of 1waylinks and 3waylinks, so I'd really like to know what you think about this.
Thanks,
Stelios
Stelios:
When I say that the duplicate content penalty is a myth, I mean the typical notion of duplicate content: that if you have dup content on your site, Google will penalize the site. That's a myth. Here's a quote directly from Google:
"Duplicate content doesn't cause your site to be penalized. If duplicate pages are detected, one version will be returned in the search results to ensure variety for searchers."
So clearly Google doesn't penalize duplicate content. HOWEVER, the second part of their statement makes it clear that it's tougher to rank duplicate content since you're competing with the other duplicates and Google will only show one in the results.
I have spinning in 1WL because lots of customers requested it, and I don't pretend to be the absolute authority on what does and does not work — I just know what I've found to be true. So if lots of customers want the capability, that's cool, I'll put it in.
I use the spinner myself, but only to vary the link text in the links without having to create multiple posts.
Make sense?
That's good, i read your last article also, what you said that's good and most know it also but the thing is they ignore the importance of these things when they actually perform them, key word selection no doubt is crucial but extensive link building can make things more favorable to you. but that is a great post pointing common but important things which we miss.
Hi Jon,
"So clearly Google doesn't penalize duplicate content. HOWEVER, the second part of their statement makes it clear that it's tougher to rank duplicate content since you're competing with the other duplicates and Google will only show one in the results."
Yes, I understand that there is no penalty in the sense that they won't ban your site… they'll just ignore the duplicate pages.
So does that mean that if you post the same article on 1waylinks for 50 credits then after some time, only 1 version will count for Google, and thus only 1 backlink?
Or would the backlinks count even if most of the duplicate pages are filtered by Google.
Thanks again for your insights.
Regards,
Stelios
Hi Jon,
Like many people here I am using 1WL, 3WL and MyWayLinks - and I guess you will be mentioning these in your post on Monday.
However, I have always been unsure how fast I should build links to a new site.
My impression was that Google gave me a hard time any time I created too many links to fast (like 20 / day for a brand new site)
I have not noticed this 'penalty' when I created links to a blogspot blog or another web2 property - just with new domains.
It would be nice if you could mention how many links / day or week you are creating when your domain is new - and at what point you increase the link building speed.
Thanks
Stefan
Stelios:
"So does that mean that if you post the same article on 1waylinks for 50 credits then after some time, only 1 version will count for Google, and thus only 1 backlink?"
No. If that was true then article marketing would be a total waste of time, and wouldn't work as incredibly well as it does.
Google counts links from each unique domain the article shows up on, but it will only show one copy of the article itself in the search results for a given set of keywords unless there's just nothing else to show.
Hi Jonathan,
Just got your email for "Geek-Free Profits" [Selling physical products online (part 3 of 3)] and, WOW, what a great Internet Marketing setup.
You used two blog entries to get everyone enticed and then presented your offer.
You did a great job of giving only enough information without giving away any details and then you present an offer for the rest of the information. Kind of tricky, but extremely well executed.
Thanks again, I learn a lot just by reading this site.
Richard
I love that blogs are do follow know. I wish all blogs would follow your blog. I just want to say that for keeping it do follow.
duuh …. waited with anticipation for the Monday blog post and finally read "Look for an email from me about that on Monday."
Jon, I am a current customer of instant article wizard and thought I saw a product where you could put an article into the software/website and it would spit out a shortened version of that article/page. I have been looking for it ever since and have had no luck. Please Help!
This physical products online must be suitable for new blogger like me. I will figure out to buy it. Thanks for sharing
Jon,
Up above you said:
- "I also put up an attention-grabbing banner ad for my brother's site."
Where 'exactly' did you put up the banner ad? Was it with a
banner advertising company?
- or was it just on the Feeder Blog?
Sorry but, it was unclear - please tell us all.
Thanx
- Garrett Dann
Nice Post . all the basics are included in fabulous way , thanks for sharing but selling the products on internet is really a very tough job
Great info. Now I know more useful plugins. You always guide us to the right way. Thank you Jon.
This is incredible stuff. I always learn best from examples and I hope you'll do more of these in the future or go more in-depth into the subject.
I like the idea of feeder sites, I've heard about them but never actually saw anyone talk about them concretely. So thanks!
Hi Jonathan….
From all of your explanation, I have a question about that. How we can know keyword from that Selling physical products online..??
If we use keyword in google is very much. How we can know it faster & easy??
Some very good ideas, Jon, I like especially the SEO for the blog, suggestions of the plugins, though that WP-Sticky works with WP 2.6 but not 2.7, seems lot of people have the same problem - any ideas?
Tom
You're completely right. Of course, you always start with keywords. These are great tips and thanks for that. Helpful post.
Its nice, helps in selling on website and also in growing our online buisness
Thanks! this helps in growing our online business. i need more blogs like this
nice stuff for better understanding about online selling physical products
i read both part 1 and part 2 now waiting for 3rd one. adwords ppc is best
Jonathan..you must be so experienced in this job, selling online. Reading your article here, I get some new ideas on how to do better than what I'm currently doing at the moment. Thanks a lot for this.
Selling stuff online is great but it doesn't fit my lifestyle. I only want to promote other peoples stuff.
Hi,
really great information.Selling your products online can help your business to grow dramatically but without the right selling tips and tools you won’t receive half of the results that can be achieved.But your post shows that you are expert in this work.Great..